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It was bound to happen. Being left to our own resources with maps conflicting with an all knowing electronic voice telling us where to, it was a recipe for disaster. I’m blaming the round-a-bouts. As soon as you get off A8 (Provence’s super hi-way) you cross a round-a-bout every 300 to 500 meters. It completely turns your sense of direction around, kind of like spinning in a circle when we were children making us dizzy and disoriented. Not a good thing when driving in a foreign country trying to find your way to local sites. Today we wanted to go to Grasse, a town in Southern France, where the ladies wanted to visit Fraganard, a perfume shop. Mais oui! Oh; the joy of experiencing French perfume and face creams. Merveilleux. It seems that Madame (the female voice of our GPS system) wanted us to go via the super hi-way and we wanted to go on D562, per map directions, the scenic winding hi-way to get a feel for the real Provence. We were at odds. Madame was most insistent but in the end our guys won the day, albeit we wasted an hour programing and reprograming the GPS to convince Madame of the virtues of the route we wanted to take.

It was a rather trying ordeal though hilarious. Fighting with your car, a rental one at that, certainly seemed ridiculous. But finally taking an additional hour and a half we arrived at our destination pleased that we triumphed over a machine.

Grasse is famous for it’s perfume companies. It also has a historic section where shops and boutiques bore the signature of old century atmosphere. We stopped for ice cream and then found a little shop that sold only nougat. Yum! Couldn’t go back to our rented country home without a good size chunk. Also, found a lingerie shop that fit the description of Ingrid’s novel, Winter Pleasure and French Lingerie. The shops were quaint and most unique. The fight with Madame was well worth it, round-a-bouts and all.

Tomorrow – the open farmers market in Le Muy where merchants sell products grown and produced locally. Stay tuned and subscribe so you don’t miss any posts. Au revoir mis amis.

About Marianne Scott

In all the years I worked in business, I never knew I had a flair for storytelling. Being tangled in the day-to-day challenges of meeting deadlines, dollar targets, and ever tighter material delivery expectations left little time or energy for creativity. Read more

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